David left a manuscript consisting of the complete collection of his fifty-one dream drawings, from his first dream at seventeen to his last at sixty-two, along with an in-depth commentary on each of the dreams. This manuscript, to be published as Pictures from the Unconscious, was the crystallization of his thirty-year inner work and is the primary source for David’s DVD Appointment with the Wise Old Dog.

Introduction to Pictures from the Unconscious

"Pictures from the Unconsciousrepresents a lifetime encounter with the pictorial language offered to me by the unconscious. In a sense, I have been a kind of scribe these past thirty years, whose medium has been oil-based crayons. Some of the imagery has come from dreams, some from spontaneous fantasy. The first of these fifty-one drawings, “The Pastoral Symphony,” refers to a 1953 dream I had in Paris when I was seventeen years old. This dream proved to be foundational to my life, and all that has followed flows from that central experience.

The continual challenge was how to gather together a lifetime of commentary in some sort of order while not impeding the flow. The archetypal nature of much of the material renders a strictly chronological order quite meaningless and arbitrary. The inner world is far too rich and replete with nuanced meaning to be neatlycategorized. A principal example are the drawings relating to the Anima, I should say, inspired by this central archetype, as if she herself drew them and would not be confined by orderly boundaries. The convergences are powerful - Nature, the power of God, and the prodigious effort of the psyche to achieve balance through a union of opposites.

In my writing limitations undoubtedly are imposed through the one-sidedness of my conscious attitude. My commentaries are only a hint at the meaning of the material contained in Pictures from the Unconscious and certainly not definitive interpretations. I cannot explain the drawings - rather they explain me. My conscious words act, at best, as a bridge to an ever deeper realization of the transformative power of the psyche. The images are greater than I am. Theysuggest immense cycles of psychic life which pass through me and demand to be recorded and assimilated."

-David Blum

“I have studied and meditatedon David Blum’s extraordinary documentationof his dreams and inner work - the immense giftsthat were given to him from his unconsciousand poured into images and music. We are intriguedon all levels - emotional, imaginal, intellectual.Our hearts are split open as we watch the process of the inner marriage.”